The family had left Delhi for a holiday. Within days, their home was empty, two domestic workers had disappeared and jewellery worth about ₹3 crore was on the move across three states. Then police began following the trail.
On September 6, 2026, a man arrived at his brother’s home in north Delhi to check on the property.
The family was abroad.
They had left Delhi four days earlier.
But something was wrong.
The locks had been broken.
Inside, cupboards had been forced open and rooms had been ransacked.
Then came the real shock.
Gold and diamond jewellery worth around ₹3 crore, along with ₹4.34 lakh in cash, was missing.
There was another clue.
Two domestic workers who had been hired by the family only about a month earlier were nowhere to be found.
Their phones were switched off.
For the police, this was no longer simply a burglary.
It was a race.
The thieves had apparently left with the valuables — and they had a head start.
The house had been left empty
The residence was in Riviera Apartments on Mall Road, in Delhi’s Timarpur area.
The owner, Anuj Gupta, and his family had left for an overseas trip on September 2.
Four days later, the burglary was discovered by his brother Anshul.
The thieves had apparently known that the house was empty.
They had enough time to break open the locks and cupboards and collect a large quantity of jewellery and cash.
But they had made one mistake.
They had left behind a trail.
Not necessarily a fingerprint.
Not a DNA sample.
Not even a face clearly visible in a single photograph.
Instead, investigators had something increasingly important in modern policing:
movement.
The first clue was on camera
Delhi Police began going through CCTV footage.
The search quickly expanded beyond the apartment building.
Investigators followed the suspects’ movements from Mall Road towards ISBT, then to New Delhi Railway Station, and subsequently towards Mukarba Chowk.
More than 300 CCTV cameras across Delhi, Bihar and Jharkhand were examined, according to police accounts reported by multiple news organisations.
The footage helped investigators reconstruct the suspects’ journey after the burglary.
They appeared to be carrying two backpacks.
The stolen wealth was on the move.
And so were the people carrying it.
The trail split
The investigation became more complicated once the suspects began separating.
Police said one of the suspects was a 17-year-old from Giridih in Jharkhand.
The other was 22-year-old Anil Kamat, a domestic worker from Supaul, Bihar.
The teenager was traced to Darbhanga.
On September 8, police reportedly found CCTV footage showing him at Darbhanga Railway Station. He later travelled towards Jharkhand.
The CCTV trail became especially useful because it showed something investigators could compare with other evidence.
At one point, police said, Kamat was carrying a bag while the juvenile was empty-handed.
The bag mattered.
Because somewhere inside it, investigators believed, was the missing jewellery.
Then the trail led to Bihar
Technical surveillance and other intelligence helped police establish links to Bihar and Jharkhand.
The teenager was eventually apprehended in Giridih on September 10.
But Kamat was not there.
Investigators then traced him towards his in-laws’ home in Supaul.
He had apparently moved again.
This is where the investigation became a family affair.
Police arrested Dev Chandra Sah, Kamat’s 49-year-old father-in-law.
And they found something that confirmed the investigators’ suspicion that the stolen property had not disappeared.
A bag.
Inside it was the money and jewellery.
But the biggest recovery was still to come.
Five feet underground
The stolen valuables had not been thrown away.
They had not been sold.
They had not crossed an international border.
At least part of the haul had been buried underground — nearly five feet below the surface.
Police recovered 117 gold and diamond jewellery items, estimated to be worth about ₹3 crore, along with ₹4.34 lakh in cash and the bags allegedly used to transport the stolen property.
The recovery was videographed through the e-Sakshya system, according to police accounts.
A burglary that had begun in a locked Delhi apartment had ended with investigators digging into the ground.
The treasure had been hidden almost literally beneath their feet.
The Nepal plan
Police say Kamat had a plan for the money.
He allegedly wanted to leave India for Nepal and use the proceeds of the burglary to establish a restaurant or café.
That claim comes from the police investigation and should therefore be treated as an allegation unless established in court.
But it provides an important clue about what investigators believe happened after the burglary.
The jewellery was not simply stolen for immediate consumption.
Police allege that Kamat intended to turn the stolen wealth into a new life.
A new country.
A new business.
A new identity.
Except that the plan never got that far.
The CCTV trail caught up with him first.
The investigation took less than two weeks
The burglary was reported on September 6.
The juvenile suspect was apprehended on September 10.
Sah was arrested after police traced the stolen property.
Kamat was arrested on September 16 after being brought back on transit remand.
By then, police said they had recovered the entire stolen haul.
The case had been cracked in less than two weeks.
But speed was not the only remarkable part.
The investigation had crossed several jurisdictions.
Delhi.
Bihar.
Jharkhand.
Railway stations.
Roads.
CCTV cameras.
Mobile-phone and technical surveillance.
And finally, a buried cache of jewellery.
The crime had been designed around distance.
The investigation defeated it through connectivity.
The unusual clue wasn’t one camera
It would be easy to describe this as a CCTV success story.
It was.
But that would miss the more interesting part.
There was no single camera that apparently showed the entire crime.
Instead, investigators pieced together a chain of movement.
One camera showed the suspects leaving.
Another helped establish their route.
Another showed them at a transport hub.
Another helped place them elsewhere.
Technical surveillance then connected the people and locations.
The evidence accumulated.
This is increasingly how urban crime investigations work.
A city is full of cameras.
Railway stations record movement.
Mobile phones generate location and communication data.
Vehicles leave trails.
Digital transactions leave records.
Individually, each clue may be weak.
Together, they can become a map.
The burglars had another problem
The stolen jewellery itself was difficult to disappear.
Gold can be melted.
Jewellery can be broken up.
Diamonds can be separated from settings.
But a haul containing more than a hundred identifiable pieces is difficult to simply make vanish.
Police were able to recover 117 items, according to the investigation.
The recovery also means investigators now have physical evidence connecting the alleged burglary to the people they have arrested.
That evidence will ultimately have to be presented and tested through the legal process.
An arrest is not a conviction.
The accused remain entitled to a fair trial.
A previous case may now attract attention
There is another detail in the police account that could make this story more interesting.
Police said Kamat had previously been booked in connection with a ₹1.25-crore burglary in Shalimar Bagh.
That does not establish that he committed that earlier crime.
But investigators may now examine whether there are similarities between the cases, whether the same methods were used and whether other offences could be connected to the same network.
That is where a burglary case can become something bigger.
The immediate case may have been solved.
The wider question may be whether investigators have stumbled upon a larger pattern.
The clue trail
Crime: High-value residential burglary
Location: Timarpur, north Delhi
Date reported: September 6, 2026
Stolen: 117 gold and diamond jewellery items + ₹4.34 lakh cash
Estimated jewellery value: About ₹3 crore
Key investigative tool: CCTV + technical surveillance
CCTV examined: More than 300 cameras across Delhi, Bihar and Jharkhand
Major locations tracked: Mall Road → ISBT → New Delhi Railway Station → Mukarba Chowk → Bihar/Jharkhand
Recovery: Jewellery and cash recovered; jewellery allegedly found buried nearly five feet underground
Arrests/apprehensions: Anil Kamat, Dev Chandra Sah and a 17-year-old
Police allegation: Kamat planned to use the proceeds to move to Nepal and open a restaurant/café
Current status: Investigation ongoing; allegations have not been tested in court.
CRIME SOLVED STATUS
🟡 CRACKED — NOT YET SOLVED
The property has been recovered and suspects have been arrested, but the criminal case itself will have to proceed through the courts.
The five-foot secret
The family had left Delhi thinking their home was secure.
Four days later, they discovered that the locks had been broken and their jewellery was gone.
The thieves had tried to turn a three-state journey into an escape route.
They moved through transport hubs.
They changed locations.
They split up.
They switched off phones.
They tried to put distance between themselves and the crime.
But the city kept recording.
A camera saw a movement.
Another camera saw another.
Technical surveillance connected locations.
Investigators followed.
And eventually, the trail ended not in a vault or a foreign country, but in the earth.
Five feet below the ground.
Underneath the soil lay 117 pieces of jewellery that police say had been stolen only days earlier.
The alleged plan was to turn a burglary into a new life in Nepal.
Instead, the investigation turned the journey itself into evidence.
The thieves tried to bury the evidence.
They couldn’t bury the trail.
